15 February 2013

Skandiewrap, or: More Than You Really Wanted to Know

Granted, this is my survey. I decide who gets to participate—for the record, I've only been inviting civilians since "competing" polls of professional critics began proliferating—and I tend to avoid folks with wildly dissimilar taste (though there are some notable exceptions), so the results decidedly reflect my own. But while I can't deny the existence of the so-called "D'Angelo Effect," which gives a certain edge to films and performances I favor, that doesn't mean I inevitably get my way. To wit, this is the only third time in Skandies history that my own #1 film for the year (in commercial release) actually landed at #1. Just for fun, here's how it's played out:

1995: Exotica. Oscar-style voting, was nominated for Best Picture but did not win.

1996: Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills. #7.

1997: The Game. #9 (and placing that high thanks almost entirely to myself and a former voter I'll just call "Vern").

(Gonna keep updating that list over the years, just for my own benefit. Doubt anyone else is still reading this.)

Close call with the Mamet comedy, but my top pick has always made the cut, usually among the five "nominees." Almost every year, though, consensus goes with something else, so the wide embrace of Holy Motors, which handily won four of our eight categories, makes my heart glad. Not that it's a big surprise, mind you—I wish folks who weren't at Cannes could have experienced the almost maniacal reaction to its world premiere, complete with whoops and wolf whistles from the typically staid press corps. Not to mention that it had already won two of the three big critics' polls (Film Comment and indieWire), spent the last few months atop the Movie Nerd top 10, etc. This was one of those years when the presumptive winner was, if not a lock, at least a very heavy favorite. Though I for one hadn't anticipated a 126-point blowout for Best Picture.

Our other winners, likewise, were hardly curveballs. Weisz took home the same prize from the New York Film Critics Circle; Lavant and Hoffman won Performance and Supporting Performance in the indieWire poll; Adams won Supporting Actress in the Voice poll. As noted in the comments below, the acclaim for Ms. Adams bewilders me—it's certainly a change of pace for her, but she isn't given a whole lot to do apart from look steely and simulate an angry handjob (one of many scenes in The Master that felt showy-for-showy's-sake to me)—but I can't say I expected much more than the six votes received by my own favorite in that category, Sarah Gadon, who perfectly captures the knowing artificiality Cronenberg's more abstract films require. In any case, some years we're more in sync with the critical consensus, and this was one of those years. At least we put Anne Hathaway in the top five for playing Catwoman rather than Fantine.

By the same token, there were fewer cases this year in which we turned up our collective nose at films lauded elsewhere. Of greatest note by far was the complete shutout of This Is Not a Film, which was widely liked (3.00 average) but received only a handful of votes. Perhaps the title worked against it somehow. Beasts of the Southern Wild was highly divisive (though not divisive enough to land on the Love It/Hate It list below), with few supporters among the August Voting Body, and there wasn't a great deal of love for Silver Linings Playbook, apart from Lawrence's performance. And that's about it, really, in terms of significant snubs—not counting AMPAS favorites, to which as usual we mostly said Argo fuck yourselves.

Okay, now for the number-crunching. (Many of you will want to check out at this point.) What follows are the stats I used to send out to voters (via snail mail!) back in the '90s, which I still maintain for my own obsessive amusement.

HIGHEST AVERAGE RATING (1996–2012)
(includes only films receiving a minimum of ten votes)01. 3.65 The Sweet Hereafter (1997)
02. 3.61 Being John Malkovich (1999)
02. 3.61 A Separation (2011)
04. 3.58 Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996)
05. 3.57 In the Company of Men (1997)
06. 3.56 Secrets & Lies (1996)
07. 3.53 La Promesse (1997)
08. 3.52 Yi Yi (A One and a Two…) (2000)
09. 3.50 From the Journals of Jean Seberg (1996)
10. 3.48 Irma Vep (1997)
10. 3.48 Lone Star (1996)
10. 3.48 Margaret (2011)
No new additions this year. But then, until last year, there had been no new additions in a decade.

SELECTION COMMITTEE ON CRACK
(lowest average for a film that screened at the New York Film Festival)1996: Flirt (2.20)
1997: Kiss or Kill (1.79)
1998: Voyage to the Beginning of the World (1.80)
1999: Dogma (1.89)
2000: Before Night Falls (2.31)
2001: La Ciénaga (1.95)
2002: In Praise of Love (1.95)
2003: Chi-Hwa-Seon: Painted Fire (2.19)
2004: Free Radicals (2.08)
2005: Palindromes (2.15)
2006: Rolling Family (1.83)
2007: The Go Master (1.93)
2008: Married Life (2.25)
2009: The Windmill Movie (2.13)
2010: Hereafter (2.05)
2011: We Are What We Are (1.64)
2012: Hyde Park on Hudson (1.69)
I'd really like to see the committee try to justify the inclusion of Hyde Park on artistic grounds.